Cultivating Trust and Navigating Power

How to enhance your change efforts by considering the social nature of change.

🗓️ Enrollment opens Jan. 2025

⏱️ Self-paced

💻 100% Online

Course enrollment is closed.

⚠️ Part of a team of 10+? Enroll at any time!

We provide flexible start dates for teams and organizations of 10 or more people.
Enroll your group at any time, outside of our public enrollment periods.

Plus, we offer special discounts based on the size of your group to make this course even more accessible.

Creating change is a social process

In implementation, collaboration is key. 

People need to work together and our relationships are extremely important.

We know that trust is foundational for enacting change that power dynamics are a major part of change efforts. But knowing isn’t enough.

What can we actually do with this awareness?

How can we strengthen our relationships to help us achieve our goals — and be more effective in how we collaborate to create change?

Why trust and power?

Being able to cultivate trust and navigate power dynamics are essential for creating change, yet they’re rarely taught in practical ways.

People aren't usually trained in building trust and addressing power between individuals and organizations. It's often assumed that either you have these skills or you don't. Or that you can acquire them through mentorship by following others’ examples.

But we've seen that even those who have great success in working with others often aren't able to articulate what they do, why they do it, or how they do it.

We created this course to show you how authentic collaboration can transform your change efforts

Throughout 8 modules, we will:

  • Help you dig deep into what trust and power truly are

  • Show you how to assess your individual and inter-organizational relationships

  • Empower you with tangible actions you can move forward with immediately

This course is for you if…

You've hit roadblocks in your work and wish you had tools to steer your collaborative efforts in a better direction.

You understand that nurturing relationships is important for your work but you’re not sure which gaps to fill. You want to be able to identify what's working, what's not, and what to do next.

You want to enhance your approach to practical implementation and contribute to your team's success.

Who might benefit
from this course?

We designed this course for professionals across all fields.

Because no matter where you work, if you want to create any kind of change, being able to collaborate with others effectively leads to progress.

And since our background is in implementation science, this course will be especially helpful to teams that provide implementation support.

By taking this course, you’ll learn...

The core components of
trust and power

The relationship between trust, power, and implementation

Special considerations for organizations when assessing trust and power

How to assess trust and power in your relationships

Actions that directly tap into the
core components for strengthening
the way you collaborate

Practical guidance and roleplay examples to illustrate how to apply these strategies to your relationships

What’s included in this course

🎥 15+ informative videos led by your instructors, Dr. Julia Moore and Dr. Sobia Khan

🎙️ 4 conversational podcasts where we illustrate examples and strategies for cultivating trust and navigating power

⏺️ Recorded scenarios where we demonstrate how actions can be put into practice to inspire you to take action in the real world

📝 Interactive activities to exercise your ability to apply you've learned

📖 Self-reflective assignments that enable you to make connections between course concepts and your work

📎 PDF workbooks containing overviews of course concepts, activities, and assignments

📚 Readings and resources recommended by our expert team

💬 Direct communication with our course facilitators to answer your questions as you move through the material

📒 Bonus: Glossary of compiled key terms and definitions

⚙️ Access to our PDF resource, the Cultiv8 Process: An 8-Part Plan to Assess, Reflect, and Take Action on Trust and Power, an effective guide to strengthen how you collaborate.

  • This resource breaks down the steps of three key processes for understanding trust and power.

  • It includes a collection of practical actions for increasing the level of trust others have in you and for demonstrating your trust in them, based on your specific assessment of power in each relationship.

  • By enrolling, you’ll receive the Activity Guide PDF that contains the full instructions on the process plus the Quick Start PDF that condenses the instructions and focuses on the worksheet elements.

🎓 Certificate of completion after successfully completing the course and assignments

👥 Networking opportunities with other course participants

🗓 Access to all course materials until Feb. 1, 2025 so you can go back and review what you’ve learned as needed

Implementation Support Specialist Certificate

If you’re interested in becoming a Certified Level 2 Implementation Support Specialist, this course counts towards the Level 2 requirements.

Note: Level 2 certification is currently in development.

Meet your instructors

“Relationship building is a core part of implementation because people enact change together. I have time and time again seen that trust and power can make or break collective action. We put this course together to help people through the vital parts of implementation that are never formally taught - how to deconstruct the nature of trust and power, and how to use strategies that can strengthen our relationships and mitigate power dynamics. Thinking about trust and power has been life changing for me and I hope it will be life changing for others as well.”

- Dr. Sobia Khan

“I love talking about frameworks and theories, but a couple years ago I started noticing that I was getting more questions about relationships than about frameworks. In reflecting on the questions we were getting, we realized so many of people's challenges in partnering and collaborating to make change happen are centred around issues of trust and power. That’s why I am so excited about this course. We take a really practical and actionable approach to providing guidance on dealing with the relationship challenges that come with creating change.”

- Dr. Julia E. Moore

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See what past course participants are saying

  • “This was a great course. I really appreciated the mix of course readings and material (recorded videos and podcasts, TED talks, articles, etc). Often I find the reading material for some online courses exhausting, but the support material for this course was engaging and I genuinely looked forward to the suggested material section.”

  • “The course overall was phenomenal and really helped me understand and reflect upon the concepts and actions to building trust and connection and navigating power in relationships, in both my personal and professional settings. It gave me awareness, tools and confidence to navigate the trust and power in my relationships and be progressive.”

  • “I love the variety of approaches to learning. It doesn't feel monotonous, which makes me more engaged with the material even when I don't have a lot of time.”

  • “It's really gotten me to think about trust and power in a different way. I feel like I'm more aware and strategic in my relationships.”

  • “What I liked most about the course is the versatility of all the tools. They can be used to assess huge relationships between organizations or between two co-workers. “

  • “The course is just so well laid out and easy to understand. You've really done a great job of taking the academic jargon out of concepts and weaving them all together in a practical way.”

Course schedule

This course is 100% online and asynchronous. This means that you can learn whenever and wherever you want to!

Immediately after enrolling, you’ll have access to Module 0 (Implementation Foundations) and Module 1 (Why Trust and Power Are Foundational to Implementation).

You’ll then be given access to a new module each week to help spread out the material, but we can provide you with access to all modules upfront if you’d like.

📅 Key dates

Enrollment is open Jan. 2025

➡️ Access all course content for 1 year

Course enrollment is closed.

Module Overview

Enroll as a team or organization!

Participating as a large group provides immense benefits to teams and organizations.

By progressing through the training together, you and your team will establish a shared understanding of concepts, terminology, tools, and processes to ultimately enhance your change initiatives.

This also creates opportunities for greater engagement and connection among team members as you can discuss the training content together and meet to share your thoughts and reflections.

We highly recommend this collaborative approach to building implementation capacity.

Perks of enrolling your team

Special discounts

Start at anytime

Optional add-ons

Have a discount code?

Discounts are available for past TCI course participants (StrategEase; Implementation, Spread, and Scale; Embracing Complexity), Implementing Change Community members (join anytime!), full-time students, and groups of 3+ employees from the same organization.

Free spots available for participants in LMICs

In an effort to support capacity building in applying implementation science in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs), we offer 20 spots for eligible professionals to enroll in Cultivating Trust and Navigating Power for free. We will open up applications for these spots the next time this course is offered.

Frequently asked questions

  • You can approach this course based on what's best for your schedule. As soon as you enroll, you'll have access to 2 modules to start you off.

    Then you’ll be given access to a new module each week to help spread out the material, but we can provide you with access to all modules upfront if you’d like.

    You're welcome to move through the course at a pace that works best for you.

    The course and all materials will be accessible for 1 year upon course enrollment.

    If you’re interested in receiving a certificate, you will have until the end of your course access period to submit your completed assignments.

  • Yes, the entire course is online and asynchronous — so it can be completed on your own time at your convenience and pace.

    While we we’ve designed the modules in an intentional order and recommend working through the course chronologically, you are free to navigate the course in whatever order best suits your learning.

  • If you finish all modules and the 8 assignments prior to the end of your course access period, you’ll receive a course completion certificate.

  • You will continue to have access to all course content for 1 year.

    The workbook (which includes key concepts; assignments; suggested readings and additional resources; and the activities) as well as many other materials included in the course are downloadable, so after you've saved them, you'll be able to refer to them for as long as you'd like.

    This means the main elements you will lose access to after 1 year are the online videos and podcasts.

  • In terms of time commitment, we anticipate it to be about 2-3 hours per week.

    For each module, we estimate setting aside approximately 1-2 hours to move through the main content. This includes watching the instructional videos (which are usually less than 7 minutes long), listening to the podcasts, looking through the supplemental materials, and time for taking notes and writing reflections.

    You may also want to spend 1-2 hours working on the assignments and checking out the recommended resources. The assignments are about directly relating the content back to you and your work; therefore, how much time can be quite variable depending on how much background work you choose to do.

    In terms of the resources, it’s up to you how many you’d like to take a look at!

  • Yes! Cultivating Trust and Navigating Power will count towards the requirements for the Level 2 Implementation Support Specialist certification which is currently in development.

    If you’re interested in becoming certified, please note that the Level 1 Implementation Support Specialist certification must be completed before moving on to Level 2. Learn more about our certificate program.

  • Yes, we aim to make Cultivating Trust and Navigating Power accessible to everyone. We offer the following discounts (one per person):

  • Our course facilitators will respond regularly to questions posted in the comment sections of the course throughout your access period. This is where you can receive direct support.

  • Cultivating Trust and Navigating Power is available every January.

Still wondering if this course is right for you?

We encourage you to enroll if any of these apply to you:

  • You know there's more you can do to be a better collaborator — you want to be proactive but aren't sure where to start

  • You want to be able to assess your relationships more accurately so your interactions are both authentic and strategic

  • You want to move towards your goals with greater clarity and have tools to draw from to feel better about your day-to-day experiences with others

Have any questions?
Contact us.

Join us starting Jan. 2025!

Get notified when Cultivating Trust and Navigating Power opens for enrollment.

    I also want to receive the monthly Implementation in Action bulletin and announcements about TCI's courses & events.

    Interested in getting a sense of our teaching style?

    Enroll in Inspiring Change 2.0, our free mini-course on the foundations of implementation science, or watch the recording of our free virtual workshops on Practical Guidance for Embodying Equity in Implementation!